NEWSBYCAROL SCOTT

Victory! Gov. John Kasich today reduced the charges against Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single African-American mother jailed and convicted of a felony earlier this year for enrolling her children in a school district in which she did not live.

The news comes after more than 184,000 Change.org members emailed Kasich’s office in support of Williams-Bolar since January of this year, when her conviction sparked a viral campaign on Change.org created by Massachusetts resident Caitlin Lord (read Lord's account of why she started the petition).

Alongside African-American citizen coalition ColorOfChange.org, Change.org members from around the country called Kasich’s office on Tuesday, September 6, urging him to pardon Williams-Bolar. Ohio’s Parole Board had recommended that Williams-Bolar not receive a reduction in sentencing.

Earlier this year, Kelley Williams-Bolar spent 9 days in jail because she sent her kids to a safer school district. Now, her future is in the hands of Ohio Governor John Kasich.

More than 180,000 Change.org members have signed a petition asking Governor Kasich to pardon Kelley, who chose to send her kids to a safer school in her father's neighboring district, instead of the neighborhood where she lived. Governor Kasich responded positively to the petition and international media coverage around the story, asking the Ohio Parole Board to hear Kelley's case.

But inexplicably, last Friday afternoon, the Parole Board recommended against pardoning Kelley. But it's not too late, because Governor Kasich can make his own decision to issue a full pardon.

Can you please take one minute today, Tuesday, September 6, to call Gov. John Kasich's office and ask that he issue a full pardon of Kelley Williams-Bolar?

In response to pressure from parents, educators and grassroots advocates, Scholastic Inc. will drastically limit its practice of partnering with corporations to produce classroom material, the company announced last week.

The publisher had been under fire since May, when it was forced to stop distributing a fourth-grade curriculum called “The United States of Energy” that had been paid for by the coal industry and distributed to classrooms across the country. Boston nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood had called on Scholastic to drop the curriculum, and after achieving success, expanded its campaign -- in concert with online social action platform Change.org -- to lobby for sweeping reforms to Scholastic’s controversial “InSchool Marketing” division.

Teen mothers are expected to fail. Just ask Bee Lavender, who, after she became pregnant at 18, remembers a swift and merciless change in the way most people treated her:

"It was a profound shock to go from being the good kid, the honours student, the girl who talked about youth leadership on television, to being perceived as human detritus," Lavender wrote in The Guardian.

Lavender dropped out of college and moved back home. But you wouldn't know it today if you met her. An acclaimed writer and activist, her books include a memoir about danger titled Lessons in Taxidermy and the anthologies Breeder and Mamaphonic. She's the publisher of the website Hipmama.com and is the founder of Girl-Mom.com, an advocacy project for teen parents. She's also taking a stand today for another teenage mother, Kymberly Wimberley of McGehee, Arkansas.

Music fans are slamming Provo, Utah-based Neon Trees -- famous for their No. 1 hit “Animal” -- for playing an international music festival sponsored by a tobacco company despite winning an award for anti-cigarette advocacy

More than 1,000 music fans have signed an online petition on Change.org asking Provo, Utah-based Neon Trees to pull out of an international music festival sponsored by a tobacco company.

The band, famous for their hit “Animal” -- which has been performed on the TV show Glee -- won an award for anti-tobacco advocacy in 2008 -- yet they are slated to perform at Indonesia’s Java Rockin’ Land festival July 22-24, sponsored by Gudang Garam, one of Indonesia’s largest tobacco companies.

Mother Jones magazine reports that the band has ignored a campaign by Marita Hefler, a PhD candidate in Public Health at the University of Sydney asking them to cancel their appearance at the concert. Hefler started her petition on Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing platform for social change demanding that Neon Trees - as well as Good Charlotte, The Cranberries and other bands pull out of the festival, which features scantily-clad models distributing cigarettes for free to concert-goers.

Earlier this year, students on college campuses around the world demonstrated against a spate of hefty tuition hikes, from the University of California to the University of London.

But a new 230 percent tuition hike for some Arizona community college students comes with a new, disturbing twist: xenophobia.

The Maricopa County Community College system - the largest in Arizona - announced in March a 230% tuition hike for out-of-state students. The kicker? Unlike some college tuition increases, this one isn't about tighter budgets - it's a veiled attempt to shut out undocumented students from college classes.

Asked in February what he thought of HarperCollins' decision to cash in on libraries by selling them "self-destructing" e-books, literary superstar Neil Gaiman tweeted back in just five words: "I think it's incredibly disappointing."

HarperCollins author Gaiman - best known for novels Coraline and Stardust, as well as the comic book series The Sandman - isn't the only author who's spoken out against the publishing giant's new policy. The Rupert Murdoch-owned NewsCorp announced recently it will sell e-books to libraries that will last only 26 reads, forcing cash-strapped libraries to purchase popular titles again and again. (Librarian Andy Woodworth's campaign against the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house has more than 65,000 signatures on Change.org, making it one of the most popular campaigns on the site to date.)

From an award-winning children's author to a British academic, here are eight more authors critical of the HarperCollins e-book policy:

UPDATE: 7:24 p.m., Tuesday, April 26: Kelley Williams-Bolar has just released a statement through her attorney, David Singleton of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center:

Original Post: Most nights, Tanya McDowell sleeps in a minivan. Other nights, she sleeps at a shelter or at a friend's house. So when it was time for her 5-year-old son, A.J., to go to school, she wrote down her babysitter's address to sign him up for kindergarten.

Little did she know, sending A.J. to kindergarten at Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Connecticut could mean 20 years in jail and a $15,000 penalty for the unemployed single mom. Tanya was arrested this month and charged with first-degree larceny for allegedly "stealing her son's education." Norwalk authorities say that since A.J. doesn't live within district limits, it's illegal for him to attend kindergarten in the district - and his mom is a criminal for enrolling him there. A local activist has created a petition on Change.org, urging Norwalk officials to drop the charges and stop punishing a mother who wanted what was best for her child.

"I'm still in shock," Tanya said in an interview with the Norwalk Patch this week. "What did I do wrong? I just want the best for my kid. It's like any mom or any dad out there."

The fact that a parent could do jail time simply for sending her child to public school is reminiscent of the story of Kelley Williams-Bolar of Ohio. Nearly 100,000 Change.org members signed a petition started on the site early this year, demanding that Ohio Governor John Kasich pardon Williams-Bolar, who was convicted of a felony for sending her children to a neighboring school district. Her case became a national story, used by advocates and politicians to argue for school choice and against criminalizing parents. Gov. Kasich referred her case to the state's Parole Board; a decision is expected this summer.

So you're the next kid in line at the library to check out a classic like The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson. Old Yeller, by Fred Gipson. Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary.

If you're trying to check out those children's classics in e-book form, however, you may discover that the book's not there anymore -- because it just self-destructed.

That's the scenario HarperCollins is laying out with its new e-book policy for libraries, which limits the number of times an electronic book can be checked out to just 26. After that, the library would be forced to re-purchase the book - every time the book hits 26 checkouts.

Librarian Andy Woodworth has started a Change.org petition to tell HarperCollins that this policy is bad for readers everywhere.

Every morning across the country, Muslim students tell their parents they're scared to go to school -- because they'll be beaten and taunted for practicing Islam. Politicians flog fears of "the other" to drum up votes and campaign donations. Peaceful American citizens are branded as "terrorists" because of their skin color or their faith.

But on Friday, a student movement against blind Islamophobia scored a major victory -- UCLA's Islamic Studies program will re-open this fall after being frozen since 2007.

Last fall, students rallied, demonstrated, and attracted more than 5,400 signatures from the international Change.org community who called on the UCLA administration to bring back the program. These activists, led by student Ilona Gerbakher, argued that the fate of UCLA's program was a matter of national importance.  As we at Change.org blogged about - and publicized - their campaign, students kept the petition updated and finely-targeted, marshalling national support to show UCLA administrators that this was far larger than a campus issue.